Gary flipped on the light in his bunk and frozen in the doorway. Someone had entered his quarters, had turned his recliner around. Someone was pointing a gun with a very large bore right at his eyes, Someone with a cigarette in the corner of his mouth and teeth clenched so tight it was a surprise they hadn't exploded already. Some one who looked a lot like Brock Samson.

"By rights I ought to kill you right now." Brock said.

Gary considered his lifetime of sins. None particularly stood out as warranting a Samson blackout. "I'm sorry about the car," he said to fill the void.

"This has nothing to do with the car - what did you do to my car."

"Nothing! I didn't touch it or anything. I just thought you might ..." he left it to Brock's imagination to fill in the blanks. If Gary's sphincter hadn't locked up tight the instant he saw Brock he's be standing in a pile of yellow right now.

"Get in. Close the door, turn off the lights."

Gary gulped, did what he was told. He could see the tip of Brock's cigarette for a moment before Brock stubbed it out. In the darkness he waited to die. For the past year he had told himself that life didn't matter anymore. He was beyond life and death, good and evil. He was filling his time until death came for him. Suddenly with death facing him in the darkness Gary realized that, really, he wanted to live. But you couldn't argue with Brock Samson. He let nothing deflect him from his task. If he meant to kill you, you'd be dead. "What did I do?" he asked nonetheless. "I thought you liked me."

"I do like you, Gary," Brock said, from another part of the room. The man had cat-like feet. Gary hadn't heard him move. "I'd hate to have to kill you, which is why you're not dead yet."

The barrel of the gun touched Gary's cheek. He felt his legs go rubbery under him. "Don't do that man. You know I know you can kill me anytime you want. Don't play with me like this. If you're going to kill me at least give me a little dignity."

Brock laughed. It was low and self-amused, but somehow scarier than one of the Monarch's cackles. "You're all right, Gary. You're all right. - Crap your pants?"

"Not yet but if you don't tell me what's going on pretty quick I may pass..." He hit the floor with a meaty thunk.

He was lying on his recliner when Gary finally recovered consciousness. He faked unconsciousness for a moment while he tried to make out his situation. From the smell of smoke he gathered that Brock was still in his room.

"Here's the thing. Gary," Brock began. How did he know that Gary was awake? "If I tell you what you did wrong then I'd have to kill you. Which would be inconvenient because other than this one thing you have been doing a pretty good job here."

"Really? Coming from you that's quite a compliment. Can I sit up?"

"Sure, knock yourself out."

"Literally, or - uh"

Brock laughed. "I'm not going to kill you. I'm not going to make you kill yourself either but we have a problem and you've got to fix it. What I'm going to tell you is secret. It's higher than Top Secret. It's higher than Double Dog Dare Secret. There are only three people who know this: Me, Doc and the Secret President. If you spill this I will come and kill you. And it won't be some quick knife in the gut either. Got me?"

"I don't think I'm ready for this." Gary answered truthfully. "Maybe you ought to confide it to someone more reliable..."

"I would if I could but you're it! Here's the deal. The boys can't look into their history. You've got to stop Dean from writing his tell-all book."

"You know about it?"

"Doc has been whining all day about it. They brought me back from an important operation just to talk to you.

"What's the big deal about that? So Doctor Venture been a bad father. It's not like that comes as a surprise."

"You have no idea the things Doc has done for the boys. You don't have the right to judge him."

"What? What did Doctor Venture do to and for his sons?" Gary asked.

The boys - they're not Doc's sons. ... They're clones!"

"That's it?" Gary asked incredulously. "Everybody knows the doctor was cloning people. He was even going to clone 24 for me but he didn't think I'd given him enough in trade."

"No they don't. Nobody knows that Doc can clone people."

"But I saw it. So did all the people from the OSI and the Monarch. We all know."

"The OSI troops had their brains washed. The Monarch is part of the Guild and the Guild knows how to keep a secret. Here's the deal, Gary: if the world knew that cloning was possible it would destroy society. People would be fighting tooth and claw for their own cloning tanks. Political figures would become immortal with an endless succession of clones replacing their bodies. Society would stagnate since the same people would remain in power.

"Plus the news would destroy the boys. The boys have suffered enough. They deserve better. Besides they're the last ones. We can't let them get killed. So you've got to convince Dean to not write his book And you've got to do it before he finds out the truth. You understand me?"

"Yeah." Gary breathed.

He waited for Brock to continue. After a long wait he realized that Brock had disappeared as quietly as he had appeared. He got up and flipped on the light. No one was there with him. Aside from a cigarette stubbed out on the console of the security desk there was not evidence that Brock had ever been here. He sighed, dropped down in a recliner and leaned back. His clothes were soaked in sweat. He shivered uncontrollably. Brock Samson. A direct order from the Man himself. Stop Dean Venture from writing a book that he had just encouraged him to write. Oh, yeah, That will be easy.

Gary didn't see how he could sleep after a visitation like that but the next thing he knew it was morning. And the phone was ringing.

"Yo?" he croaked while struggling to sit up in the recliner.

He was surprised to hear Triana's voice on the other end. "I just saw something - strange, and I thought I ought to tell you about it."

"If it's a naked Dean I'll talk to him."

"I'm serious, Gary, it was something weird. I - I thought I saw a - a - tree walk into the number 5 manufacturing wing."

"A tree?"

"A tree!" Triana insisted.

"Well, that's weird, even for the Venture's I'll be over to check it out. You someplace safe.?"

"I'm outside dad's residence."

"Smoking?" Gary asked.

"Eff off."

"Met you there. Try not to get killed in the meantime."

He hung up and dressed.

Triana was waiting out where she said she'd be, dressed in one of her father's old robes. It pooled at her feet, which were bare. "See! No more running around in T-shirts. Aren't you pleased."

"I didn't say you couldn't. I liked your legs, they looked good without the tights."

"Hey! I thought you were the one who with the steady girlfriend!" Triana's face reddened.

"I am. I'm hoping to take her out on a date tonight. That doesn't mean I don't notice a good looking girl when I see one."

"I liked you better when you weren't trying to flirt."

Gary grunted. "What's this about a walking tree?"

"I was out here smoking when I saw this - thing - leave the woods over there, walk over to the no. 5 manufacturing wing and duck through the doorway. It looked like a tree, all green, maybe eight feet tall."

"When you say tree do you mean a walking tree as in an Ent, or a Triffid or something else."

"What's a Triffid? Actually, you know, it looked like a giant head of broccoli. It had a slender base that rose about three quarters of the way up,, then spread out into a roundish head of tight curls."

"A Veggie Tales tree? How was it moving? Was it hopping about?"

"Veggie Tales? Triffids? What are these things?" Triana said with a confused look. "It didn't hop, it just sort of slithered. I didn't really see any legs or stuff. It just sort of moved. It was all over so quickly and I was so surprised by the whole thing... Besides, how can a tree move? It doesn't have legs, or muscles, or a nervous system."

"We shall see. If I'm not back in a half hour, call Dr. Venture, then get your dad and get the hell out of here."

"I'm going with you."

"Why? You'd be safer here."

"I feel like a crazy person. I want to see this tree. I want to know I'm not crazy."

"Suit yourself. But stay back and let me do point."

"Sure. Ah, don't you have any kind of weapons with you?"

"If this is a tree what good would a gun do? Have you ever tried to shoot down a tree? It doesn't work. I've got my knives-" he popped the blade out of their wrist sheaths "- and I've got l'il slugger here." He held up a child's baseball bat. It was only 30 inches long and tapped like a regular bat.

"A bat?"

"They're designed for hitting things. What better weapon can there be? It's small and lightweight so it's maneuverable yet can really pound things when you apply it. You want it? Give you something to defend yourself with."

"No, I don't need a weapon, I'm a sorceress, remember."

They'd been walking over to the manufacturing wing all this time. Gary paused on the steps. "I thought you were like a first semester witch. I hardly imagine that teach a freshman any really dangerous spells."

"I can make fire. I think that would deter a tree. Besides maybe it's a friendly tree."

Gary pushed open the door and paused in the doorway. He took a small flashlight from a pocket and shone its light around the top and sides of the frame. The flashlight emitted an electric violet light typical of 'black lights.'

"What are you looking for?" Triana asked.

"I was hoping that maybe the substance from your walking tree would glow under UV light. It would give us some proof that the thing exists." With a sign, Gary turned the flashlight off and put it in his pocket again. "So much for that idea," he said as they walked into a reception area.

A counter along one side defined a secretary's station. On the other wise was an open area where chairs and couches once sat. Narrow stairs lead to offices on an upper level, while corridor lead back to the factory floor. There was no tree.

"Do you think it went upstairs?" Triana asked.

Gary shook his head and went down the corridor and into the factory.

The building had long since been stripped of all its machinery. All that remained was a large empty room the size of a football field. Light from a row of clerestory windows illuminated the room. Lanes were marked out in scarred yellow paint. Locations of equipment were marked by pipes coming up out of the floor and electrical conduits dropping down from the ceiling. But aside from these the room was empty. Dusty and empty.

"No tree." Triana sighed. "I guess I am going nuts."

"Don't be so hard on yourself. This is the Venture Compound. It's, like, the center of weirdness for the entire tri-state area. If there's a walking tree anywhere in this country it will find its way here."

"Great." Triana wandered off looking around the big factory like it was the Sistine Chapel. Her eyes focused on the floor for a moment. "Gary, come here."

"Look at the floor," she said when he got there. Gary looked but didn't see anything.

"Look at how the dust is all swirled around, like a wind blew through here," she explained. "but all the doors and windows are closed, so no wind!"

Gary pulled out the UV light and shined it on the swirls but nothing showed up. He unclipped a big maglight from his belt and directed that on the floor. The dust seemed to swirl first one way then the other. He followed across the floor to where a water pipe had been leaking. There was a large wet spot there but no standing water. "I think your tree came in here for a drink of water then left." he said.

"Where did he go?"

"Got any tricks in your bag of spells?"

"Divination is next semester. Wait, is the dust disturbed over there?"

The spoor lead towards the back of the building and to a rear door. Although locked on the outside, the inside push bar would open the door any time. Gary pushed the door open and carefully looked outside. No one and no walking tree was waiting for them. The woods that covered the north of the Compound ran up within sixty feet of the building. It was hard to tell from the grass whether anything had moved over it. While there was nothing in the woods that looked like an eight foot tall head of broccoli.

"Nothing." Triana sighed.

"I wouldn't say that. It seems pretty clear that something is going on. I'll tell the doctor about it. And in the mean time keep your windows closed and locked and don't go wandering in the woods alone."

"Yeah, just ignore the rabid bat under your bed and all will be well."

"As a former henchman, that pretty much defines my life."

Gary found Dr. Venture in the kitchen flailing away on a short length of black plastic tubing. "Oh. It's you," he said when he noticed Gary watching. "Here, give it a whack," and handed Gary the hammer.

The tubing looked like a length of armored conduit. Gary tried not to smile at the thought that the Doctor had taken his suggestion to heart, raised the hammer and brought it down with all his strength.

"Oh, great," Dr. Venture complained. "Now I've got a dent in my counter. Just great!"

"But the conduit looks to be OK," Gary tried to sooth.

"It's is?" The Doctor ripped it from Gary's hands and peered at it near-sightedly. "No, some of the beads have shattered. Damn!"

"But the wires are still good, isn't that the point."

"Oh. Yes, of course. Now if I can just get the unit cost down... You know," the doctor threw the length of cable back on the counter, "everyone says that Thomas Edison was a genius because he patented so many things. But if you read up on what he did, it was mostly trial-and-error until he got what he wanted. Like this cable. I've been trying out various types of armoring and finally found this ceramic thingie that does the trick. It's all in my notes..."

Which you probably wrote up and back-dated while waiting for the clays to bake, Gary thought. The idea that the great Dr. Venture had actually taken one of his ideas and turned it into a real product was thrilling enough at the moment. Later Gary would wonder about how much of that money rightfully belonged to him.

"Say, Dr. Venture have you ever done any experimentation with trees. May hybriding some animal tissues with a vegetable, or something?"

"What an absurd idea. Why would you ask such a ridiculous question"

"You apparently have a walking tree problem in building number 5."

"Set some traps. So, did Brock talk to you about that thing last night?"

"I'm surprised I'm still alive!"

"What? No, Brock wouldn't do anything like that. He's a pussycat."

"Doc, we both know that's not true." Gary had been looking into the sink. He held up a charred aluminum skillet. "What happened here?"

"Since you weren't here to cook them breakfast, the boys tried to do it on their own. I'm luck they didn't burn down the house."

"They don't know how to cook?" was Gary's first response, followed by, "I'm your head of security, not your chief cook and bottle-washer."

"My security includes a healthy and nutritious breakfast."

Gary dropped the pan back into the sink.

"Brock was very clear about stopping the book from being published. Do you have any idea how to stop Dean from writing it, 'cause they're not the kind of simply listen to orders."

"Kill him?" Dr. Ventures mused. "No, we can't do that, we don't have any spares."

"I'm not going to kill somebody just because they know too much. Besides, how can the boys not already know they're" - he whispered the word - "clones."

"I'll show you," Dr. said Venture and walked away without waiting to see if Gary was following him. He took him out into the labs and down into a sub-basement. The room was large and mostly dark, with only a few emergency lights burning. It was filled with rows and rows of broken cylindrical glass tanks mounted atop machinery of some sort. Dr. Venture lead Gary away from that area to a corner where piles of boxy computers hummed and whirred.

"A mainframe" Gary whispered in awe. "That thing has got to be older than even the Monarch's."

"To my knowledge it's been here all my life. But it still works. Inside here are all my father's recording for the boy's sleep beds and - and the recordings of the boy's memory taken from the sleep beds. This is the master copy of Hank and Dean!"

"On tape?"

"I can't figure out how to install a hard drive."

"No, I mean, you have Hank and Dean's whole lives here on tape?"

"What so surprising about that? Dr. Venture snapped. "This is where it all started. My downfall into misery and madness. My great mistake,"

"Cloning your sons?"

"No, having sex with women."

"You're gay?"

"God, no. I've lusted after woman all my life. I just never had any luck with them. My Dad, though, he must have screwed everything woman he ever saw, and probably a few of the men as well. And for all that fornication what he have to show for it? Me, one lousy son. While me, I can't have sex with a woman without them getting pregnant. One time with Myra - knocked up. One time with Nikki - knocked up. I'm surprised Dr. Girlfriend didn't get knocked up the one time we did it."

"You slept with Dr. Mrs. The Monarch!"

"She called herself Charlene at the time. And she claims that nothing happened. But if nothing happened why was she naked in my bed the next morning. Answer me that will you?"

Gary was growing red in the face and unconsciously knotting his fingers.

"Oh, great," Dr. Venture whined. "That's right, you had the hots for her, too."

"She's dead to me," Gary replied with great difficulty.

"Good, just keep thinking those thought," Dr. Venture said, quietly laying down the wrench he had picked up a moment earlier.

"Anyway, Myra was my bodyguard after my father's death, murdered, probably by a jealous husband. The OSI decided that between my father's existing inventions and the ones they were sure I would come up with, they needed someone on hand to keep me alive. Also someone was slashing my tires a lot and leaving butterflies in my car. You know the Monarch has been Arching me for years, many of them without approval from the Guild. In those early days he wasn't any better at Arching then I was at super-science.

"One warm Hawaiian night - we were at a conference on trans-chronal anti-gravity - Myra put away a few too many gin rickeys and slipped out of her clothes and into my bed. It was my greatest triumph. Thanks to my father's upbringing I was both tongue-tied around woman and - sadly - impotent. Myra fixed both problems that night."

"Who's Nikki?"

"A fan. Of the Rusty Venture show. The show had been canceled for something like ten years earlier, but it was still showing in parts of the country. When she found out that the Venture Compound was near by she started calling on me in person. I think Myra kept her away for a while, but after she got knocked up with twins she kind of let her job slide. So I met Nikki, who said she was 19 - and looked it, too!" the Doctor said defensively, "but she was only fifteen. So I screwed her and she got pregnant and I had to pay off her mother to keep it quiet. I've got three more years on that child support..."

Doctor Venture wandered among the broken vats running his hands over the undamaged parts of their surfaces, lost in memories.

"It looks like you're fixing up some of these machines," Gary said. "I thought the deal with the OSI was you never clone anything again."

"What they don't know won't hurt them." He looked at Gary meaningfully. "The boys are doomed. They need back-ups. It may not work but I've got to try."

"Wont' they be born as babies? That's what you said when I asked you to clone 24. Or were you lying about that."

"No, the growth rate can't be accelerated. It just turns the cells cancerous. At least that's what my father's notes say. So it would take nine months to grow your friend to where he could survive on his own. Just like with a baby, it's a matter of lung development. they just aren't ready before 36 weeks. But the tanks are large enough that the grub can be grown to full size - in twenty years time."

"Wasn't there an episode of the Rusty Venture Show where you were chased by a cancer blob?"

"Oh, God, you're another fan," Dr. Venture groaned. "Yes. I remember that episode. It was incredibly lame because all I did was ran and scream. Not Rusty Venture material at all. Of course running and screaming was pretty much all I did when dad took my on his trips. Come to think of it, even the Cancer monster was real. One of dad's failed experiments.

"But we know a lot more about endocrinology now then we did back in dad's day. I think it's possible, with care, to accelerate the cell's aging for a while then stop it, giving me seventeen year old grubs in case my boys need them in just a few months."

"Don't you think you've messed them up enough already?"

"Don't you think I don't know that? Doctor Venture snapped. "But it's too late now, all I can do is just keep muddling forward. If I don't, all this crap I've done for them will be wasted."

"A couple months after the boys were born," Dr. Venture continued after a moment, "Some jackass using the name "Smarticus" decides to attack the compound, sets fire to the place, kills a lot of my employees. Myra was trying to evacuate with the boys when he dropped a bomb near her. She was in the hospital for months. The boys - didn't make it.

"Smarticus! What a stupid name. I wrote the Guild a strongly worded letter telling them I'd never agree to be Arched by anyone with a stupid name ever again."

"And they listened?"

"They damn well had better. My great-grandfather co-founded the damned Guild. Dean's the legitimate heir to the damned thing. You were there when he anointed David Bowie as his Sovereign in charge. It's all crap. I wish I'd opted out when my dad died. It would have saved me a lot of grief.

"So where was I?"

"Your sons had died."

"Myra was inconsolable. She blamed me for the boys' death and wouldn't even speak to me for weeks. If I'd read up on psychology then like I did later I would have realized she was still in the second stage of grief - anger and in time would get over it. I had gone straight to stage 3 - bargaining - and thought I could fix everything if I could just bring the boys back. I remembered that my father had done some experimentation with cloning, dug around and found his prototype chamber and dusted it off. It was surprisingly complete as it stood. I made some modifications based on modern research and had a hundred units manufactured. I exhumed the boys' bodies, harvested some tissue and got to work. The real trick to cloning is convincing skin cells that they're really fertilized egg cells and providing them enough nutrients for them to grow into a blastocyte. From there it's easy to attach them to an artificial placenta and let them grow.

It was a year to the day after the boys' death that the grubs were ready to come out. Myra was still profoundly depressed about the death of her boys. I thought this would cheer her up." Dr. Venture stopped talk and looked at Gary. "This is the part where you say I must have been crazy."

"Oh, I said that a long time ago. This is like a bad horror movie where the characters make every wrong decision imaginable - splitting up, taking showers - and you sit there wondering how much worse can this movie get."

"I don't even know why I'm telling you this. All you need to know is that the boys can't find out about this. You got that!"

"Personally I think you're making a big mistake. The truth wants out and knowledge will make you free. The boys will do better knowing they're clones."

"Put a sock in it!" Dr. Venture snapped.

"Whatever."

"So I decant a pair of twins, clean them up, wrap them in blankets and take them to Myra with a big "surprise," thinking this will make her happy after a very depressing year of her crying about her lost boys. But does she thank me for using some super-science to bring her boys back? No. She goes ape-shit all over me. Calls me a monster. Calls me every name in the book. Then she leaps for my throat. I had to call in an OSI SWAT team to take her down.

"The boys were, surprisingly, unhurt. And just like that I was a single father. The next couple years are a blur as I tried to raise two boys and run the business as well. Myra was placed in a sanatorium diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. Because she thinks I killed the boys then brought them back to life in some kind of Satanic cult." Venture laughed dryly. "It's kind of ironic. She's locked up because they think she's delusional but she's not. She knows exactly what happened. Makes you wonder how many other paranoid schizophrenics aren't crazy, they just know a reality that no one else does."

Gary had no comment.

Venture continued, "every so often she escapes and tried to save the boys from me.

"Finally they sent me Brock and things settled down a bit. I think Brock was being exiled at the time. I mean he was over-qualified to be a bodyguard, but I really needed the help. The business really ran down while I was distracted and I've never been able to turn it around.

"How many times have you had to clone the boys?" Gary asked.

"Just the once. Weren't you listening? I made fifty clones of each boy the one time. Whenever they die I'd decant another set."

"So repeat cloning doesn't explain why the boy are the way they are."

"What's wrong with the boys besides being idiots."

"Doesn't it seem strange that the sons of the famous Dr. Venture, Super-Scientist, are 'idiots'?"

"They're not idiots. They're as smart as you or I. I've got the tests to prove it."

"From their sleep beds?"

"Well, yeah."

"I rest my case."

Dr. Venture sputtered for a moment, protesting that Gary had it all wrong, though he wasn't sure just what he was defending.

"So how many times have you 'decanted" your boys? And what do you do when only one of them dies?"

Venture turned white at that question and turned away from the former henchman to work furiously on one of the half-assembled cloning tank. After a time trying to fit a sub-assembly into a slot it clearly didn't fit he threw it across the room and sighed. "Fourteen. They're very death-prone. You've got your job cut out for you keep this last set alive."

"And the others?"

"What could we do," Doctor Venture protested. "We couldn't let the boys know they were clones. When one died we had to start fresh with two new grubs."

"You killed the remaining clone just so you could start off fresh? You - you..." now it was Gary's turned to walked away. He was to the stairs leading upstairs when Dr. Venture caught up to him. "Don't you run out on me. And don't you get all high and mighty about it either. We're all cold-blooded killers here. Yes, I've killed my own sons for their own good. I'm not proud of it. It haunts me at nights. But I've seen you, number 21, you've killed people. You've killed plenty of people to get what you wanted. You're no better than me, so don't act like you are!"

"I'm beginning to have second thoughts about this whole thing," Gary said, turning around. "I thought the Monarch was evil because he's a super-villain but he hasn't killed nearly as many people as you and Brock has. Or at least Brock has. The Monarch has come up with many fiendish plans but he's never done anything as plain sick as you and your clone replacement program. Maybe the whole point of the Guild of Calamitous Intent was to keep scientists like you too busy to screw up the world more than it already is!"

"Duh!"

"Duh?"

"I figured that out when I was, like, 17," Dr. Venture said. "Which is when I climbed out of my sleeping bed and went off to college."

"You had a sleeping bed?"

"Again, duh! Who do you think invented them? A duffer like me? Who do you think programmed them. It was all my old man's idea. The only reason I used them on the boys was to record their memories so I could pump it back into the next set of clones. Besides, I couldn't send them to public school, they'd be sitting targets for one of my enemies. I know it's not been a good arrangement but in my - and their - situation, it was the best I could come up with.

Gary sat down on the corner of one of the cloning tanks and thought for a while. Dr. Venture fidgeted for a while then went off looking for the circuit-board he had heaved. When he got back Gary was looking at him speculatively.

"Tell me about your mother," he asked.

"My mother?"

"Do you know anything more about your mother than your sons know about theirs?"

"What do you mean? Why I -" the doctor paused as a sudden thought struck him. "You think I'm a clone? Don't be ridiculous!"

"I've never heard of a Mrs. Venture. Just Dr, Venture - your father - and Rusty. And you said these cloning tanks were more or less operational when you found them."

"Why would my father want to clone me?"

"Maybe because he couldn't have children."

"Now this is just getting sick. I won't listen to it."

"So why won't you tell me about your mother.

"All right. My birth certificate names 'mother' as 'Jane Doe,' and lists her as a Caucasian female age 23, 5' 6", 135 pounds with brunette hair. All my life my father never mentioned her and would not answer any questions about her. After he died I hired private detectives to track her down. And there was nothing. Their best conclusion was that my birth certificate was forged. But to suggest I was cloned - that's ridiculous!"

"Would you go nuts if it could be proved that you were a clone?" Gary asked.

"Don't you mean more nuts?" the doctor snarled sarcastically. "Look, the boys are a lot more fragile than I am. I can handle it, they couldn't. But why would my father clone me. It's not like he was particularly fond of me."

"I've been thinking about that." Gary said. "You said your great-grandfather co-founded the Guild of Calamitous Intent, and that Dean was the current true sovereign."

"So?"

"That would have meant that at one time you were the sovereign and your father efore that.. But if your father didn't have a son the sovereignty would have been in dispute. God only knows what reign of terror that would have caused. So maybe when he discovered that he couldn't have children he turned to super-science to avoid chaos in the Guild."

"You might want to check your Guard Shack for gas leaks because you sound like you've been sniffing glue too long."

"Let's get out of here. It gives me the creeps," Gary said and headed for the stairs ago. "I'm not reporting this to headquarters but I think you're making a big mistake rebuilding those tanks."

From the top of the stairs Gary looked out into the Venture's living room. Dean was hunched over something on a table that looked like, but not quite like, a laptop. After a moment he realized it was an old fashion typewriter. Dean was typing intently. Triana was leaning over his shoulder reading whatever it was he was writing. Hank was on the couch, a notebook in his lap. He was writing furiously, with long pauses to look venomously at Dean. This would be a great time to intrude and try to convince both boys, apparently, not to write a tell-all book. But at the same time he could see Brock, quietly, methodically grabbing their heads and giving them a fatal snap. . No wonder he loved these boys. He'd killed them so many times. He had thought Brock incapable of emotion but apparently not. Guilt had driven him to love the thing he had to kill.

And now the responsibility was Gary's. Keeping the boys alive if he could, killing them if he couldn't. He felt nauseous. And if Triana found out too much - or guessed too much - he'd have to kill her. How could he explain that? He look at the living room and suddenly saw it filled with piles of dead Hanks and Deans. Even the Dean at the typewriter had become a skeleton, Triana a ghost...

Gary rushed out of the residence.